A Witch's Tale IC

[NeoSeraphi]

Rachel Denethar steps forward into the entrance hall. This will be the start of her second year at Naturia Circle Academy, a boarding school for weavers of powerful arcane magicks. She only managed to make a few friends during her first year here, and she didn't particularly impress anyone with her test scores or her extra curricular activities. Will she choose to stay hidden behind her bangs for another long and lonely year, or will she step forward and make the effort to make friends, study hard, and participate in clubs?

Rachel glances around for anyone she might know, but she is unable to spot her friends in the large sea of heads. The students all gather together in the Grand Hall, where the Headmistress steps forward to speak.

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"Welcome back, to everyone who is returning to our humble home. And to the freshmen, I hope you are all more excited than nervous. I am the headmistress, Fiona Scarlet. Naturia Circle Academy is home to many wonders. We keep magical beasts here so that students may learn how to tame and breed them. We craft mighty constructs and powerful homunculi so that students may learn the responsibilities associated with creating and maintaining artificial life. Whether your interests lie in alchemy or ring-forging, teleportation or deception, white magic or black...you have a home here."

She raises her gaze to the crowd. "This is a place of learning, and as such we do not tolerate any sort of discriminatory behavior, no matter the subject. Some magicks may seem disturbing to you. Some may seem downright wrong. However, just because a subject is distasteful does not mean we should be ignorant of it. If your classmate seems interested in necromancy, compulsion, malconvocation or even defying death itself, that is not for you to judge. And in return, none shall judge you."

Fiona steps back. "And with that, you may all relax and enjoy your meals together. Have fun everyone!"

Her speech concluded, the headmistress evaporates into thin air.

Rachel considers what she should do next. She has a few companions she might want to meet up with. Maybe she should try looking for the girl who was nicest to her last year? Or...she might step out of her comfort zone and sit with one of the boys in her class. Or, she could try and find her little brother before he gets lost. Of course, sitting alone is always a tempting option. She could get more reading done that way.

[Diachronos]

As everyone begins to scatter after the headmistress' speech, Rachel starts looking to see if she can spot her younger brother. While he might be embarrassed to have his big sister effectively holding his hand on his first day, she recalls all too well how lost and intimidated she'd felt on her first day at this academy. It's not an experience that she wants her brother to go through, even if he can be a bit hard to live with at times.

She looks at her raven, Sebastian. "Can you take a look and see if you can spot him?"

[NeoSeraphi]

The raven flies up for a moment and gazes around, before dropping down onto Rachel's head and tilting it so she looks a certain way.

There she spies her younger brother, Ciel Denethar, sitting alone at the end of a table.

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Ciel is a white mage, a wizard who studies the way that positive energy can be transferred from person to person using conjuration magic. White mages are capable of restoring vitality to others, similar to a divine caster. Ciel learned a lot of what he knows about conjuration magic from Rachel, and has managed to enter the school with fairly good entrance exam scores.

He looks up as he sees her approaching. "Ah, Rachel? What are you doing here?" he asks, glancing around as several kids at his table start whispering about the upperclassman who decided to approach the boy.

[Diachronos]

Rachel smiles at her younger brother. "I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright on your first day. It can be a lot to take in at once."

[NeoSeraphi]

A red flush spreads across his cheeks. "Geez...I'm already fifteen you know. I can take care of myself!"

He scoots one seat over to make room for her and starts eating. "Um, so what the headmistress was saying...there are really necromancers here?"

[Diachronos]

Rachel sits down with him. "Yes. The school has strict rules, though. Nobody's going to try to do anything bad to you, and even if they do the staff will step in as soon as they find out."

[NeoSeraphi]

He looks surprised. "That's scary...but, you're not studying anything like that. Are you, Rachel?"

[Diachronos]

Rachel shakes her head. "I'm focusing on conjuration magic to summon creatures and create objects."

[NeoSeraphi]

Ciel nods and continues talking with her for a while. The two of them finish their meal and Rachel walks Ciel over to the Alpha Dormitory. Ciel looks a bit uncomfortable with the whole affair, but he says nothing and waves goodbye when his sister leaves.

Now on her own, Rachel turns to walk across the concourse so she can reach her own dorm, the Construct Dormitory on the east side of campus. As she walks, however, she feels a set of eyes on her back. Rachel turns around to find...

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Roll a d6 in the OOC to determine the encounter.

1 - Her best friend

2 - The captain of the fencing club

3 - The intimidating beauty of the Vampire Dorm

4 - The lead singer in the school band

5 - The genius potion student

6 - The idol of Naturia Circle Academy

[Diachronos]

Rachel trembles a little, and slowly turns around, only to find herself staring at one of the students from the Vampire Dorm of the campus. "Oh, h-hello..."

[NeoSeraphi]

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The girl frowns. "I'm sorry, am I interrupting your little midnight stroll? I just happened to overhear you talking with some freshman kid at dinner...you got a problem with necromancy, sweetie?"

A serpent peeks its head out of her collar. Rachel can see the head has been sewn back on from a hole in the snake's neck. "Easy now, Sebastian."

Sebastian? Their familiars share a name! What a strange coincidence.

[Diachronos]

Rachel blushes and shakes her head. "N-no, of course not! I... my little brother is studying healing magic and he hasn't heard much about necromancy other than the bad reputation that necromancers tend to get. I was just... letting him know that... y'know, that he doesn't have to be afraid..."

[NeoSeraphi]

The girl crosses her arms. "Hmph. Look, I don't know what you think you know about black magic, but you don't. There are a lot of us here at the school and we're just looking for a way to practice our trade safely and learn from some of the best teachers in the world. So don't go filling anyone's head with nonsense about us being 'dangerous'. Got that?"

[Diachronos]

Rachel gulps. "R-right. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to give him the wrong idea..."

[NeoSeraphi]

The girl nods and wanders off.

Rachel continues on her way to the Construct Dorm, where she finds her room and settles in for the night.

In the morning, Rachel heads to her first class of the day, which is History of Magical Monarchies.

She arrives in the classroom first and sits down, opening her book up to the correct page. Rachel rather enjoys esoteric classes like these, and she always does well when people ask all sorts of trivia questions or obscure facts from long ago.

The teacher, Mr. Ferrerus, walks in and sets his books down.

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"Welcome class. My name is Azure Ferrerus, and I'm the history expert here at Naturia Circle. Now, who can tell me what about a monarchy makes it 'magical'? We have had several kingdoms, queendoms, duchies and the like in our world, and nearly all of them employed court mages. Why then, do we distinguish some of them as magical and some not?...Rachel."

Spoiler: Knowledge (History)

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Spoiler: Less than 10

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She has no idea!

Spoiler: 10-14

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A magical monarchy is a term historians use to distinguish a period of time where the monarch themselves had impressive magical power.

Spoiler: 15-19

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A magical monarchy is a term historians use to distinguish a period of time where the monarch themselves had impressive magical power. Altogether, there have been about ten important magical monarchies in the course of history.

Spoiler: 20+

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A magical monarchy is a term historians use to distinguish a period of time where the monarch themselves had impressive magical power. Altogether, there have been about ten important magical monarchies in the course of history. Rachel has already read ahead in this book, and therefore knows the three specific monarchies that Mr. Ferrerus plans to cover this term: the Wahashi, the Funlich, and the Zair.

[Diachronos]

Rachel takes a deep breath; why had he called on her first? "'Magical monarchy' is a term historians use to distinguish a period of time where the monarch themselves had impressive magical power. Altogether, there have been about ten important magical monarchies in the course of history."

[NeoSeraphi]

"Brilliant," Mr. Ferrerus says with a nod of approval. "Now I know, ten monarchies sounds like a lot of memorizing to keep things straight, but lucky for all of you we will only be focusing on the three most relevant monarchs. Now, open your books to page 47..."

Rachel answered correctly! Rachel's Expression has improved.

Spoiler: Stats

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Answering questions in class, as well as performing certain other tasks, can improve Rachel's Expression, Courage, or Knowledge.

Expression is Rachel's ability to speak in public without getting nervous. For every four points of Expression she earns, Rachel receives a +1 bonus to her Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate checks (no cap).

Knowledge is Rachel's understanding of the class material. She generally builds this by answering particularly difficult questions or by studying. For every four points of Knowledge she earns, Rachel receives a +1 bonus on Knowledge checks made while in class, and checks made during an exam (the bonus to exam checks resets after each exam period ends).

Courage is Rachel's ability to face her fears and talk to people she finds scary. For every four points of Courage Rachel has, she receives a +1 bonus to all checks while talking to a character she can Romance.

In addition to the static bonuses each score provides, there are regularly checks where Rachel will pass or fail based on her current Expression, Knowledge or Courage. These checks are a simple minimum, for instance Rachel might need 2 Courage to introduce herself to a boy. Until she has 2 Courage, she will always fail this check with this particular boy, but once she has it she can pass and talk to him.

Each score starts at 0. Rachel's Expression is now 1, her Knowledge is 0, and her Courage is 0.

[Diachronos]

She relaxes as the attention of the class is drawn back to the lecture. I hope this doesn't become a regular thing this year...

[NeoSeraphi]

After the class, Rachel heads outside. There she is met by one of her friends, who speeds up to walk beside her.

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"Hey Rachel! Did you have a nice vacation?" she asks with a smile. "That feast last night was delicious, but I couldn't find you in the crowd at all."

The woman walking next to her is Yvette Storm, an evoker who spends a lot of her time in the library. The two of them had met last year when they reached for the same book. Rachel was going to just let her have it and walk away, but Yvette smiled and asked if she wanted to read it aloud together.

It was a bit childish, but the two of them took turns reading the book aloud to one another, and they made comments about the story and implications of it, and the ways that magic work inside it. Then they met at the library again, and again. Yvette learned that Rachel enjoys doing research, not just reading fiction, and started helping her learn all sorts of little things about the world. Thanks to Yvette, Rachel branched out into subjects she never considered studying before, like geology and weaponsmithing.

[Diachronos]

Rachel smiles at her friend. "My vacation was great. How about yours?" When the topic of the feast comes up, she rubs the back of her neck. "I wanted to make sure Ciel was settling in alright on his first day."

[NeoSeraphi]

Yvette tilts her head. "Ciel? Who is that?" she asks. "My vacation was pretty good. I went to the beach with...um, well, some people. We had a good time."

[Diachronos]

"Ciel's my little brother. He just started studying healing magic here."

[NeoSeraphi]

Yvette smiles. "Aw, I didn't know you had a brother! Introduce me next time, I'll look out for him when I see him."

She points to the Village, a small cafeteria in the center of the school. "I'm heading off to get some lunch. Want to come?"

Will Rachel spend her lunch with Yvette?

Spoiler: OOC

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Generally speaking, if you don't spend lunch with the person who invites you, something else will happen during that time period. It's up to you whether you go for a more consistent and predictable way to improve your relationships or if you want to spend more time grab-bagging by going for the random encounters.

[Diachronos]

"Sure!"Rachel heads to the cafe with Yvette. "Say, do you happen to know who that scary black-haired girl from the Vampire Dorm is? The one with the undead snake?"

[NeoSeraphi]

Yvette thinks about it for a minute as they walk. "I'm not sure. But I would keep my distance from the Vampire Dorm girls if I were you. The boys there are bad enough but most of the girls are spoiled rotten. They all come from rich mixed blood families and their magic is the real deal. I've even heard some girls are sorcerers, and they're only in this school pretending how to learn magic when really they were born with it."

[Diachronos]

"I'll keep that in mind." Sorcerers? In Naturia? That can't be true, can it?

[NeoSeraphi]

"So, how was your first class? Who do you have on Mondays anyway?"

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Today is Monday. Each day you have a different class with a different teacher.

[Diachronos]

"I had Mr. Ferrerus for History of Magical Monarchies. How was your class?"

[NeoSeraphi]

"Oh, lucky...at least you can stick your nose in a book all day and he wouldn't care. I have Catreus for Mandragora Maintenance. It's going to be a long semester..."

[Diachronos]

"Come on, it can't be that bad of a class, can it?"